Avengers: Age of Ultron - Even Thor Can't Fight Ultron

We're a little over two months away from the release of Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, with the penultimate movie in Marvel's Cinematic Universe's Phase 2 poised to set-up big story-lines to come in Phase 3, including Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, and more.

Roughly a year ago, IGN had the opportunity to visit the set of the Joss Whedon-directed sequel with a small group of reporters. While there, we were able to speak with Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, about where we'll find the Asgardian God in the film, and what the events of Ultron will mean for him on the road ahead.

How Does Thor Find His Way Back To The Avengers?

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The initial threat of attack from Ultron is personal.

Question: Talk a little bit about your reaction when you first got the script.

Chris Hemsworth: It was awesome. Coming off of Thor 2 and The Avengers, I couldn't wait to read this [script]. And I just loved how it upped it in a way that wasn't just bigger and flashier. I mean everything had been amplified, but in an intelligent way. All the stories are relevant to what's going on in the world as far as the exponential growth of technology, and artificial intelligence, and the questions of the good versus the bad of the AI world. It's obviously heavily influenced by the times and that debate. He [Joss Whedon] has managed to bring all of the Avengers back in and give them a relevant reason to be there. [He's] justified the conflict. It's a tricky balance. I'm glad I'm not the one writing the thing and having to pull that off.

Q: To some degree your relationship with Loki was the driving factor of the first Avengers movie. How does Thor tie into the larger Avengers: Age of Ultron story?

Hemsworth: Well, Thor stayed on Earth from Thor 2. So he's here. He's part of the team. This is his home for the moment. So the initial threat of attack from Ultron is personal. Thor then begins to see a bigger picture about what this threat could potentially be and it begins to tie into all of our films. It's hard to say too much without talking about what I can’t talk about, but as I said, it's a personal loss from the get go. But he sees the bigger picture.

A More Humanized Thor

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There's a party scene and I was in a nice coat and jeans and the guys just kept joking, 'When did Thor go shopping?'

Q: What’s something that Thor gets to do in this film that he hasn't done before?

Hemsworth: He’s loosened up a bit. I think we lost some of the humor and the naïveté and the sort of fish out of water quality of Thor from the first film into the second one. And there were things I loved about what we did in the second one too, tonally. But that sense of fun was -- I would have liked it to be there a bit more. Joss, I think, felt the same way. So there's more humor in Thor and because he's been on Earth, he's a little more accessible now. He's off Asgard now so he doesn't have to be as regal and kingly as he is in that world, which is nice. I enjoy that more. It's sort of a box, which he gets to step out of off Asgard. You know that stuff just looks out of place, whereas here you can have a gag with the guys and he can be at a party scene in civilian clothes, which is nice...There's a party scene and I was in a nice coat and jeans and the guys just kept joking, 'When did Thor go shopping? Did he buy this online or did Jane do it? Or did he actually go shopping?' And so you don't see him go shopping, but the question’s raised because he's not dressed in his own Asgardian attire. Yeah, he's more human in the film definitely.

Q:Do we see him doing human things like going to the movies with Jane [Natalie Portman]?

Hemsworth: Yeah, I pitched that! I did. But no. [Laughs] There's a new conflict. There's a new set of circumstances. I think we created complete stories in our individual films. We don't tend to cover too much of the previous [solo film] or the next [in the team-up Avengers films]. Hopefully they will stand alone as their own story.

Thor Goes Hand-To-Hand

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We see him fly a bit more.

Q: Can you talk about the fight sequence you’re filming today [featuring Thor battling The Vision]?

Hemsworth: This is their first meeting, really. And it's, as you can see, it's conflicted. It's a big fight scene.

Q: Each time we see Thor his power and abilities keep getting amped up. Are we going to see his abilities manifest in a new way? Will he be more powerful or more trained?

Hemsworth: Yeah, I mean in this instance you see it's hand-to-hand combat because [that becomes possible] if someone is of his equal strength - or more so than him. He can afford to do that, whereas with the people who were far less capable than him and not as strong I said, 'Let's make sure he's picking up cars, and throwing them, and ripping things in half, and spending a bit more time up in the air and using the elements, as opposed to being stuck kind of in a hand-to-hand fights with the bad guys.' So, yeah, I think it keeps getting kind of amped up and more elaborate. Yeah, we see him fly a bit more.

Q: We saw that you were in your classic armor. Does he get a costume change in this one?

Hemsworth: It's been tweaked. It's a bit more comfortable. Each time you get a little more comfortable, a little more movement in it. I don't think there's any huge changes to it. I loved where it was in the second one. I think we sort of landed on something [there], because it was a bit more streamlined and functional. It's pretty similar.